Episode 186: How Kindness and Compassion Shape Future Entrepreneurs with Margot Machol-Bisnow

In this episode, DJ chats with author Margot Machol-Bisnow about the link between parenting and entrepreneurship. Margot has interviewed over 70 entrepreneurs and shares her findings about childhood commonalities.       
               
They highlight the value of praising effort and resilience over outcomes and supporting children’s unique interests. Margot also explains how entrepreneurship is about more than starting businesses—it’s about making a positive impact no matter where you work.

Learn how fostering kindness, compassion, and risk-taking can help your child develop an entrepreneurial mindset and thrive in any career path! 🌟

Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to Imperfect Heroes so you never miss an episode!

Time Stamps
7:12 – Margot dives into the surprising traits shared by successful entrepreneurs.
9:38 – DJ and Margot explore why resilience and learning from failure are essential skills for children.
18:20 – Raising kids with kindness, compassion, and integrity takes center stage as Margot shares why these values are crucial.
26:27 – Adapting to today’s fast-changing world! DJ and Margot discuss how parents can prepare their children to thrive in the face of new economic and technological challenges.

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Find DJ’s Book “Roman is Bigger” on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart.

Contact Margot Bisnow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margotbisnow/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raisinganentrepreneur1/?fref=ts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margot-machol-bisnow-a29550b5/
Find her book on Amazon:  CLICK HERE 

Transcript

DJ Stutz  00:14
You're listening to Imperfect Heroes: Insights into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in An imperfect world, and I'm your host, DJ Stutz. Welcome everybody, and thank you for choosing to spend the next few minutes here with us at Imperfect Heroes, Insights into Parenting. And today, you know, we have started this new year. We've got kind of this underlying theme for throughout the year on how kids develop morally. But today we're going to be talking about entrepreneurship and teaching our kids about entrepreneurship, encouraging them when they are interested in that. And I have this amazing guest, Margot may call biz now, and she has done so much research, and she's done interviews, and it's just amazing. And we'll be talking about that in the meantime, though, I just want to encourage everybody to if you want to get up on all of the stuff, like where I am going to be speaking or reading my books, I do that with libraries and stuff. You want some updates on some great information on raising kids, you get added content that you wouldn't get normally, just sign up for our newsletter. And so if you go to the website, which is www.ImperfectHeroes.net you'll be able to register. Or even if you just go to the podcast website, www.ImperfectHeroesPodcast.com then you can register for it there. So either one of those, you can register. It's free, and we go once a week, and you just get a ton of extra good information. So be sure and do that. All right, let's get going on our topic, Margot. It's so excited to have and we've talked a few times already and gotten to know each other nicely and and so let's talk for a little bit about let's first start with you know what you do and you've done. You've just been so involved in entrepreneurship and with commissions and committees and all of that. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Margot Bisnow  02:39
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, and it's so fun to chat on this podcast with you. Finally, after we talk so many times before, um,

DJ Stutz  02:49
I know, 

Margot Bisnow 02:49
I know, it's great. So I was kind of a traditional person, and spent most of my career working in international development and kind of, you know, normal things. And then in 2008 my younger my older son, Elliot, started an organization called summit or Summit Series. He invited 18 young entrepreneurs to go skiing with him, and thought it was going to be a one off, and they all said, I want to do it again and bring five friends. And so this amazing organization was started my husband and I just came back from Baja, where they had 1200 super cool people at one of the friends and I've signed up for their event in Detroit in June, and there, you know, it's an amazing organization. And so starting in 2010 I, I started going to the events. I didn't want to go in the beginning when it was smaller, but by the time they had 1000 people, and John Legend and Bill Clinton, cool people like that, speaking, I thought it's time for me to go so and I would just, I was so curious. We didn't know a lot of young entrepreneurs, and I was so curious. And I went up to all of them, and I said, Tell me like, how did you turn out the way you did? So willing to work so hard on your idea to turn it into something real, to take on so much risk and work so single mindedly. And they all basically told me the same thing. They all said I had someone who believed in me, someone who told me I could do anything I put my mind to. Usually it was a family member. Even more, usually, it was their mom, but not always. Wasn't always a mom. Wasn't even always a family member, usually. But I was so struck by this, and I just kept talking about it, and my kids said, you have to write a book. And I said, I can't write a book. And they said, no, no, you have to write a book. And I said. I can't write a book. And they said, you have to write a book. I'm like, Okay, I'll write a book. So they actually wrote the forward, and they said, everyone needs someone to believe in them, and sometimes that's even your kids. Oh, I love that. How sweet I know. So I had no idea, you know, if I went about it in a really serious way what I would find, and I wanted a really diverse group, half men, half women, every race, every religion, every socio economic background, born overseas, born here, small towns, big cities, small families, big families, single moms, divorced, married, you name it. And to my amazement, they were basically all raised the same, which like just knocked my socks off. So then I wrote a book, and then I started talking to lots and lots of parent groups. And then three years ago, I decided I I really needed to update it, and I started interviewing them all again and other people and added to them. And so I came up with a second edition two years ago, and I've just been talking to lots of people about it ever since, and and now I'm it's, like, my favorite topic. I'm, like, obsessed with it. There's so many unhappy kids in the world today, so many kids, and these are happy people. And anyhow, I can just, I don't want to keep babbling, but I can just talk about this for 30 minutes.

DJ Stutz  06:33
Yeah, for sure, which is about our goal. What I wanted to ask you is, how did you find a commonality in how early these kids, you know, when they were kids were interested in starting their own business, their own thing? 

Margot Bisnow  06:52
Yeah, almost none of them were 5% maybe, basically none of I mean, there were two of them who had lemonade stands. There were maybe five of them who were starting little businesses. Basically none of them were doing that. That's not what they had in common. What they had in common is that every single one of them had a passion outside of school and in every eventually, maybe not right in the beginning, but in every case eventually, the parents supported that passion. And because they had this passion that they had discovered, they worked really hard at it, and because they worked really hard at it, they got really good at it, and because they got really good at it, they developed the confidence that if they worked hard at something, they could succeed. And they learned grit, and they learned focus, and they learned determination, and they learned resilience, and they learned about failure, and they learned how to pivot when things weren't going right. And they learned all these skills you need if you're going to become an entrepreneur. The vast majority of them were not passionate about the thing they ended up becoming an entrepreneur in so for me, I should tell you I define an entrepreneur as anyone who starts something. So for me, an entrepreneur is not just someone who starts a for profit business. It's someone who starts a nonprofit, it's someone who starts a podcast, it's an artist, it's an activist. My younger son started a band. He's an entrepreneur, right? I mean, yeah, he had to find other people to play in the band. He had to find a manager, he had to find a front of house, a back of house, all these different things that it takes to run a good band. Magic giant. By the way, if you guys haven't listened, it's on Spotify, and it's well, magic giant. But anyhow, he's an entrepreneur, so the people who became artists, actors, dancers, musicians, they pretty much found it when they were young, but none of the others are doing anything with what their passion was when they were young. And maybe a third of them it was sports. For my older son, it was Tennant. And about a third, maybe more than a third of them were played sports into college. None of them does anything with sports professionally, but it's that. 

DJ Stutz  09:26
But there are lessons you learn through playing sports, being in a band, going to the neighbors and picking up dog poops for some money or whatever. You know, there are lessons you learned that get you on that path.

Margot Bisnow  09:38
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, 100% DJ, I couldn't agree with you more. And they learned to compete, and they learned how much they enjoyed winning, and they learned what to do didn't win. I don't know if you saw Roger Federer's commencement address at Dartmouth last year. You can see it on YouTube. It's fabulous. But among other things, he says to the kids. And I won 80% of my matches. I won 80% of my matches, but I lost 50% of the points I played in matches. Oh, and he said, if you're focused on your mistakes and you spend all your time looking back, you're never going to move ahead. You're never going to go forward. And this is sort of a metaphor for life. Figure out what you did wrong, correct it. Move on. Keep going. Resilience. 

DJ Stutz  10:33
So the entrepreneurs that I've talked with and associated with through my work, it's amazing to me how so many of them has said, I learned so much more from my failures than my successes. It's not a problem to fail if, if you learn from it and then move on, you don't keep making those same mistakes over and over again. And I think that resilience that you were mentioning earlier is saying, oh, okay, what's the next step then, and not getting all torn apart because you didn't win the game or the point or the match or whatever. But you look at it and you assess it. And if we can give our kids those skills, even early on, our kids, even when they're learning to walk. They learn to overcome failure, right there they fall, they whatever, and we encourage them. Somehow we lose that as parents, as they're getting older, of encouraging them through the failures and saying, Oh, well, what'd we learn from it? How can we move forward? And it's really not that big a deal to make a mistake or an error, the big deal is moving forward.

Margot Bisnow  11:44
So, I couldn't agree more, and it's one of the biggest things in the book. I've done a lot of research, and it's also like written been written about a lot, and parents who praise their children for success have kids who are afraid to take risks, parents who punish their kids for failure, have kids who are afraid to take risks, parents who praise their kids for hard work and for effort. Have kids who work harder, and it's just so important for parents to understand. And every parent that raised a successful entrepreneur, none of them criticize their children for failure. It's like you're saying. What did you learn from this? What would you do differently next time you think you could have done that might have changed the outcome? Do you think you did everything you could do? You think you put in as much work as you needed to what changes would you make? What do you think? And just get your kids to think about it, but not to punish them for failure. Because if you're punished for failure, you grow up afraid to take risks. And if you're afraid to take risks, you'll never become an entrepreneur, because you're never going to achieve anything interesting if you're afraid to take risks,

DJ Stutz  13:01
Right. Well, and I wonder too, how many of the people that you talk to, this isn't their first business.

Margot Bisnow 13:08
Right.  Well, that's another thing. That's another reason I redid the book, because almost all of them were doing something else seven years later, either they had sold their company or merged their company, or whatever, or their company had gone in a different direction, or they had gone in a different direction or something. I mean, very few of them are sort of stagnant. And that's another thing I just I want to scream to parents, like the path that we had when we were growing up, it's not there anymore. This is not kids want. They don't want to, like, graduate from college and then get a job and keep it for 40 years. And these parents who look at their kids doing whatever it is the kids love and say, Oh, don't waste your time on that. You need to focus on your schoolwork so you can get into a good college, so you can get into a good company and have a good job that'll make money, and I say to them, really, this is your goal for your child, that they would spend the next 40 years doing something they don't like, right? That's your idea that that's what your child's goals should be, that they take a job they don't like and keep it for 40 years. Doesn't seem like a good goal to me.

DJ Stutz  14:29
Agreed. I think, though too, as they grow and get older, they at least this is my experience with my five kids. Is they start out with, I want to do this. I want to do this, and then they go to college, or they go to trade school or whatever, and it morphs. And it's like, Oh, that is what I thought it was going to be, even for myself, I started out planning to teach high school, and I was good at it. I was really good at history and English and all of that. But I. As I got into it, I saw these holes that started developing when they were very young. I can do this. I can't do this. I'm good at math. I'm bad at math, all of these things. And so I even switched from high school into early childhood, and wound up teaching kindergarten and running some preschools. But you know, I think that it's okay too, as kids grow and learn and learn more about things that they find, if you get them so geared into you have to be the doctor, you have to be this, you have to be that. And you go to school and you've invested all this money, it's just ridiculous. They're in debt for decades, yeah. And so if you if they're vet invested, and they find out, Oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be, it's okay to switch and change, but let them be the key on that. It's not that. I see parents who, well, my child's gonna do this, my child's gonna be that, and my jobs. And I think it's getting a little better than it used to. But still, we have these high goals. My child has to be a straight A student, really, do they? Because there's that saying, and maybe, I don't know if you've heard this, that straight A students work for C students. Have you heard that one?

Margot Bisnow  16:17
No, but I love it.

DJ Stutz  16:17
Yeah, straight A students, and bless their hearts. And I have a grandson, salutatorian, graduated with a 4.3 GPA. He's in college now, but he was also like the MVP for all athletics in his high school. He had this more well rounded experience. And I think, you know, a lot of times those C students, they're having those more well rounded experiences, rather than being so myopic and point of view.  

Margot Bisnow 16:43
It's different for every child, right? Exactly It is. You have a kid who's a great student and who loves studying science and loves all their science classes and gets A's in them, wants to be a doctor. Hey, that's terrific, terrific, wonderful. The kid who doesn't like school, who's not happy, who's struggling, you have to deal with that. You can't try to force every child into being the same kind of person. And I mean, you mentioned kindergarten, I've got a grandchild who's in kindergarten and and my son said, you know, it's so amazing. Every one of these kids in his kindergarten class is so different. This one likes soccer, this one likes art, this one likes dancing. And I'm like, Yes, hello, parents, every child is different. It's our job as parents to pay attention to who our child is and what our child's is, and support that and nourish that and help them develop that, not try to push them all into the same cookie cutter. You know, let the one who soccer play soccer, let the one who loves dancing dance. And of course they can do other stuff, and of course what they love will change over time, and all of that is okay, but just support the thing they love and let them know you're proud of them for their success and the thing they love. 
DJ Stutz. 18:18
Right.  Well, and I think too that if we're looking to teach, you know, getting back to that moral development, to getting back to teaching work ethic, putting in the time, putting in the effort, reaching out and supporting someone else on your team that might be struggling with the skill. And I'm really good at it. I can help that instead of beating down, judging whatever that kid that isn't doing as well as yours and as good as you at something, but they have something else that they bring to the team, and teaching our kids to be able to look at someone else and see what they bring to the table. So whether it's I'm a really good goalie or I'm a really good defensive right back, or I forget what they're all called, but you know, Mark, every team needs different skills, and we see that, and we see that in others, and then we help them develop that skill. What an awesome thing to give our kids

Margot Bisnow  19:10
Absolutely and every one of these entrepreneurs I talked to from my book, every one of them was raised by parents who really focused on kindness and compassion, which goes along with your whole moral development. And what I think is so interesting is when I talk to people who don't know anything about entrepreneurship, they all say, oh, people become entrepreneurs to make money. And I say, No, people go to Wall Street to make money. People become entrepreneurs because they want to make the world a better place? Yeah, they've out. And maybe it's a product. I can make a better drink that, you know? I can make a healthier drink. I can make a healthier makeup. I can make a dress that makes people feel better, you know, or look better. I can develop a nonprofit that's going to help certain kinds of people. What? Whatever it is, it's because they want to help people. They want to do something better. They want to improve life, improve products, improve situations, and that's raised with compassion and kindness, wanting to do something that's better and that's bettering the world. 

DJ Stutz  20:17
Yeah, absolutely. And being able to sit down. And I guess, look at your surroundings, look at where people are, and identifying the need that is there. I can identify, oh, this kiddo needs help with that. Or, Oh, our neighbor across the street is really old, and it's hard for him to bring in his garbage can. I can help with that. And so when you see, when you teach your kids to be able to look and assess what's going on around them, identifying a need, and then having that confidence in their ability to contribute something to make things better. It may not solve the whole problem. I can solve this part of the problem, though. And so whether that's dealing with their siblings, their friends, their classroom at school, their team, maybe if they're on a team, wherever that is, when we can teach our kids that that's a key skill, just in life, let alone entrepreneurship.

Margot Bisnow  21:22
Absolutely.  I just agree completely, it's one of the best things parents can do is raise children with kindness and compassion and caring for others.

DJ Stutz  21:32
Yeah, yeah. And I think too with entrepreneurship, too, there's that honesty level of when I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it that's going, you know, if you don't have that down, you're not going to be successful in whatever business it is that you're trying to accomplish and achieve. Or if someone's paying me to do a service, I'm going to give them the very best service. I'm not going to do the bare minimum. I'm going to do the most. I was just talking to a guy, oh gosh, it's probably been about two, three weeks, and he has a home care business, a home health care business in the area. And we were talking and he said, You know, it's not everyone talks about, you see commercials and stuff, we're the biggest in this area or whatever. And he says my goal isn't to be the biggest, it's to be the best, to have the best people working with me, to give the best service. And I thought that's someone I want to work with. 

Margot Bisnow  22:31
Absolutely, no. Integrity. It's the most important thing. I used to tell my kids, if you lie 1% of the time, I can't trust you 100% of the time. And I remember my dad telling me when I was, you know, I think it was my very first job, and I was a teenager. And I said something like, I was bored today and I didn't do anything for like, an hour. And he said, let me ask you a question. If you walked into their office and they had a cash register and it was open, would you just help yourself to $100 and I said, Well, no. And he said, Well, isn't that like taking money for a job and not working? I was like, yikes.  Yeah.

DJ Stutz  23:10
And such a good philosophy, though. I'm so glad that your dad taught you that, and I'm sure that you pass that on to your kiddos as well. But let's look at our society that we're dealing with today, and how many of them think it's, you know? Well, I'm bored. Well, I don't like this job. Well, I don't so I'm not going to give it my 100% and you're right that that is akin to stealing.

Margot Bisnow  23:35
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's important for parents who were brought up in a different world to learn that suddenly, for the first time, like 20 years ago, we didn't know any young entrepreneurs today, when they do interviews, more than 50% of young people say they want to become an entrepreneur, and it's just parents have to recognize this, and can't keep pushing their kids to be something they're not or to do something that isn't going to make them happy. And the point is, they could try it, and if it doesn't work out, then they can go do something else. It's not like you have to do it forever. I was talking at a group of parents, and afterwards, someone came up to me and said, you know, my son started a little company in his dorm room, and I think what he's doing is stupid, but he just told us that he's not going back to college next year. He wants to move home and work on this company. And I'm so upset that I haven't talked to him in three weeks. And I saw somebody across the room who I knew hadn't graduated from college and had made a gazillion. And I called them over. I'm like Craig. Let me ask you a question. You have a choice of hiring two people. One person stayed in college. Was a very average student. Wasn't inspired by anything, but somehow graduated. The other student dropped out of college halfway through, tried to start a business. Worked. On it for a couple years, decided that it wasn't really a good enough business and wants to get some better experience. Which kid do you want to hire? And without batting an eye, he said, I want to hire the second kid. And so did the other 150 parents in this room.

DJ Stutz  25:14
Mh hmm,  Yeah. And I think too, with technology and the way that it's coming in with the attitudes of so many people are working from home now. I mean, my husband works full time for an engineering firm. He hasn't been back to the office since they send him home with COVID, but he's an introvert, he's a hard worker, and so when they were looking at him, and he said, I'd really be interested in just working remotely. He's never missed a deadline. He's always been coming up with new ideas and different things working well with other people. And they're like, absolutely you can the amount of freedom that is there. And I think more and more people all over the world, but also in the United States, are looking for, you know, maybe they want to work from home, or maybe, you know, even if they're working for another company, but getting the skills and the opportunity again, that goes back to work ethic. That goes back to giving an honest day's work for your pay. That means valuing deadlines and when they're supposed to come, and those are skills you take into entrepreneurship as well. But I think that the way society is changing, technology is changing, expectations are changing, that the attitudes about work that you and I grew up with, some of them are going to come in and work, but some of them are not that. And so we need to be open to the changes that are taking place, economically, technologically, you know, all of those things, and be aware that our kids world is not going to look very much like our world.

Margot Bisnow 26:58
I agree, and I just it's so important for parents to understand you cannot make your child an entrepreneur, and you definitely cannot take a child who is not curious and send them to a six week entrepreneur camp and think they're going to become an entrepreneur. What you can do is make your child more entrepreneurial, so that whatever they do in their life, they will have these skills. They'll be willing to take on challenges without credentials. They'll be willing to challenge the status quo. They'll be willing to work on something really hard and and try different techniques and try different ways to make it succeed. They'll be willing to do all these really creative, entrepreneurial things, even if they don't want to become an entrepreneur. Be an entrepreneur is everybody? Not that many people want to take on that much risk, not that many people want to work around the clock. I'm not saying make your child an entrepreneur. I'm saying praise your child for effort. Help your child become resilient and risk taking, and raise a child that's compassionate and kind, and raise a child who likes to compete and a child who likes to work hard and all these wonderful skills. And maybe they'll become an entrepreneur. Maybe they won't, but whatever they do in life, it will, they'll be better at it.

DJ Stutz  27:02
And I love that you brought up that having an entrepreneurial spirit does not mean being an entrepreneur,

Margot Bisnow 28:29
Right.  You can be a teacher. You can be a librarian. Seriously, you can run a restaurant. I mean, whatever it is you're doing, if you think more creatively, if you think of different solutions to solve old problems, if you're willing to take on risks, if it seems like it's a worthwhile idea, if you get back up after you've been knocked down, if you don't view failure as failure, but you view it as how you learn and grow. I mean, all these things will make you better at whatever you do. And if you want to become an entrepreneur, that's fantastic. And if you don't, it's okay, that's fantastic too. 

DJ Stutz  29:09
Exactly.  I love everything that you're bringing. I wish we could talk a lot more so. But Margo, if people want to know more about your speaking engagements and your book and all the stuff that you provide, how would they get in touch with you?

Margot Bisnow  29:26
So here's my book, and it's raising an entrepreneur, how to help your children achieve their dreams. And I have a website called raising an entrepreneur.com, and you can contact me through the website, and it gives a list of all my articles and podcasts and fun stuff. 

DJ Stutz  29:45
And of course, we're gonna have all of that information down in the show notes. So if anybody listening is interested and wants to, wants to know more and learn more and maybe grab a copy of that amazing book, just go on down, click on the links and it'll. Right there. So thank you very much. You know, Margot, before we go, I always ask my guests the same question. And so I want to ask you, you know, we know there are no perfect parents. They don't exist. And so some do seem to be maybe a more successful though than others. What would you consider a successful parent?

Margot Bisnow 30:21
So that's what my book is about. Buy the book. It's how to help your children achieve their dreams. It's realizing that every child, and this is what I said before, every child is born with a gift, and our job as a parent is to help them figure what that is, and then to nurture it and support it and tell them how proud we are for how hard they're working in the thing that they love, and to raise them with kindness and to raise them with compassion. And you know, they'll be fine.

DJ Stutz  30:58
Yeah, they will. They will. And I love, you know, when you said earlier that all of these people had someone who believed in them, and, you know, and there's that saying, and I don't know who originally, I've heard so many different people being attributed the same, but basically that every child just needs one person who believes in them. And so whether you're a parent or not, you can always be that person to a child, and I love that so Margo, thank you so much for being part of our Imperfect Heroes, family and part of our story and contributing. I know that anyone listening is going to get so much from our conversation and your ideas and so everyone, if you like what you heard. Go ahead, feel free, in fact, feel a little obligated, to leave a five star review. Five is the appropriate number of stars and even a review. And you can always ask questions or get a hold of us on Instagram and Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on truth Social, I'm on all kinds of things, but just look for Imperfect Heroes, and you'll find us. And so everyone, we'll be back again next week with another great guest and some more important and fun ideas on raising our kids and making them successful and happy and contributing. And so until next week, let's find joy in parenting. See you guys, thank you so much for sticking around to the end of today's episode of Imperfect Heroes. Parenting is truly one of the most rewarding journeys we can take. But let's face it, it can be incredibly challenging, and sometimes we make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be. The good news is that with a little bit of work up front, there are practical steps you can take to bring more peace and joy into your family life. I am passionate to share these strategies and insights with you. If you're ready to step on the path to joyful, effective parenting, I invite you to schedule a family checkup. Just click on the calendar link in the show notes below, schedule a time that works perfectly for you, and let's work together to create a more harmonious and happy environment. And remember every small step that you take today makes a big difference. So thank you again for joining us, and until next time, let's find joy in parenting.